Which soda removes rust best?

A. You may not find research on this specific project, Adrianna, because it's actually a trivial subject. By which I mean, let's say Fanta Orange is better at removing rust from nails than 7-Up. So what? Who cares enough to publish a book about that?

Your experiment isn't really about telling an eager world which soda removes rust from nails better -- nobody uses soda to remove rust from nails. Your experiment is actually about "learning the scientific method": what a hypothesis is, what an experiment is, and how and why to proceed.

A hypothesis is just an educated guess that you will try to prove or disprove by experiment. So you tried to do the research and you came up empty; that's okay! Just flip a mental coin, and guess which one is best. I flipped it and I say Coke is best. So that's my hypothesis: "Coke is better at removing rust from nails than Diet Coke, Orange soda, or 7-Up." Form your hypothesis, then conduct your experiment and see whether it supports or disproves your hypothesis. After you have your answer from the experiment, now you can try to research why. Good luck.

A. I am also researching a similar topic. Although against what the previous poster said, I have found some research. You can research what chemical reactions form the various acids that remove the rust. I have found that phosphoric acid, an acid nearly as powerful as battery acid [affil links], is one of the chemicals that removes rust. Among others are carbonic acid and sodium. There is research on topics similar to this, but when you search use things such as:

Which soda has the most acids
Which soda cleans pennies the best
Why do acids remove rust

 Yes, those sound like good search terms, James. Thanks!